❚ THE US EDITION OF FHM magazine has posted an apology on its website for publishing offensive remarks about the 19-year-old Australian male model Andrej Pejic. Readers had voted him number 98 on its list, “100 Sexiest Women in the World 2011”, ahead of Lady Gaga. Following publication three weeks ago, yesterday the mag finally removed his online profile after complaints about its anti-gender-bender stance on the Haus of Andrej Pejic blog.

The original FHM text published May 5 [see below] written by the mag’s evidently chauvinist editors was indeed downright insulting, considering that Pejic’s androgynous appearance (stats: 6ft 2in tall, 36-in waist, UK shoe size 10) had after all caught the fancy of FHM’s metrosexual readers in the first place.

Headed “Why we love Andrej Pejic”, the online text read: “Although his sexual identity is ambiguous, designers are hailing him as the next big thing. We think ‘thing’ is quite accurate. Tall, skinny and flat-chested . . . the blonde gender-bender has jumped the gun in hoping he might one day be signed as a Victoria’s Secret Model (Pass the sick bucket).” [Victoria’s Secret is a US retailer of chic and sexy women’s clothing.]

FHM’s apology blamed slackness in its own ranks: “Regrettably the copy accompanying Andrej’s online entry wasn’t subbed [ie, checked] prior to going live. FHM has taken steps to ensure this can never happen again.”

In an earlier Pejic controversy, Huffington Post asked on May 16: Should this cover be censored? — 31% said Yes! Too racy for the magazine rack. 69% said No! It’s a shirtless guy. Big deal. (Dossier cover art by Collier Schorr)

FHM’s editorial debacle follows a separate anti-Pejic episode mid-month when Dossier Journal’s cover pictured the model wearing his blond hair rolled in curlers while removing his shirt. Elle.com reported: “News-stands are covering the image for being too risqué. Little do they know they’re censoring the image of a shirtless man. Katherine Krause, Dossier’s Editor-In-Chief, says that bookstores have been made aware of Pejic’s gender but will move forward with the censoring. What’s more, it’s Dossier’s financial responsibility to pay for the black poly bags with which their distribution people must cover the magazines.”

Bosnian-born Pejic told New York magazine’s Party Lines: “The question really isn’t the gender of the person on the cover, it’s whether it’s porn or it’s art. And clearly, it’s art, so art really should not be censored in a democratic society.”

FHM's original profile of Andrej Pejic published online May 5, 2011. (Source: Haus of Andrej Pejic)

❚ HERE IS “A UTOPIAN VISION” as an antidote to the reign of Simon Cowell’s production-line X-Factor performers. The Preston-based Laboratory Project makes enormous claims about “supporting artists with integrity, skill and soul to break into the music industry”, backed by studio space and its production and engineering team, plus expertise in marketing and independent brand development. The project was founded in 2008 by Tony Rigg, a hospitality entrepreneur who previously spent 18 months as operations director at the Ministry of Sound.

Tony Rigg: “integrity, skill and soul”

The Lab is concerned to return both creatively and commercially to the roots of a band-led scene and to rekindle passion in the music-making that it promotes. The creative division claims to deliver “unparalleled music and multimedia experiences via a record label which represents a coalition of artists as a complete rethink of what a label should be for today”.

Rigg has said: “It has become more important how music looks than how it sounds. The X Factor is an extremely effective, headline grabbing, money-making machine. For many artists it is incredibly difficult to get original music heard. The Laboratory Project exists for the people who want something more from music.”

This weekend the label launched Taste Masters 2, its second eclectic compilation CD with 11 tracks of music “derived from human performance, solo artists and collaborations” — 80 musicians who include The Salford Jets, Jimmy Docherty and Antistar, as well as bands who had not previously released their work commercially such as Super 8 Cynics, Straightlaces, China White and Dresden. The original 14-track Taste Masters compilation album has been available for download since October and included Drama King, Evenhand, Fez, The Horn Brothers, Our Day Remains, Helvelyn 2 and Osiris.

Brett Anderson: “emulating people shouldn’t be about wanting to sound like them”

STRICTLY SPEAKING, Suedewere a supercool guitar band of the 80s, having come together in 1989, though admittedly their hits followed in the 90s. Having reformed last year, alas without guitarist Bernard Butler, they released The Best Of Suede in November and tonight they play Suede’s music in sequence at the first of three gigs at London’s O2 Academy in Brixton May 19–21, plus Dublin’s Olympia Theatre, May 24–26. An interview with the current issue of BEAT magazine has singer Brett Anderson (“the lost boy of Britpop”) reflecting on the climate in which the band formed…

“As a teenager in the early 80s it was an incredibly tribal time, everyone at school was either a mod or a punk or a skinhead or a headbanger. Which gang you belonged to said who you were as a person. This was when I was thirteen or fourteen, when I first started buying records and I suppose that influenced the sort of band I wanted Suede to be, I wanted them to be the sort of band people would get tattooed. I wasn’t particularly interested in Suede just being liked; I was only really interested in Suede being loved.

“Suede was about the intense passion of being loved as a band and constructing a universe for people to dive into and that was all part of the iconography of the sleeves and the worlds I sang about and possibly the over-use of lots of the imagery was all part of it. Maybe it was all part of my need to belong somewhere. We established a Suede landscape, and I always loved those bands that did that. Maybe it’s a very much over-used reference point but I did grow up loving The Smiths records and loving what they did and the kind of tribalism they created.

“I never wanted to be The Smiths, emulating people shouldn’t be about wanting to sound like them. I was talking to Jamie from Klaxons and he said he was a huge Suede fan when he was growing up and that Suede were the reason he wanted to be in a band. You listen to Klaxons, and they don’t sound anything like Suede and that’s the biggest compliment. That they took something of the spirit of Suede, they didn’t rip off the cord sequences, they didn’t rip off the words and they didn’t dress like Suede.

“They just took something of the spirit and sense of aiming to achieve something that was meant to be a little bit unachievable. And they created this incredible very original band. I’m really proud of that sort of influence. It’s the same with Bloc Party. There’s all these bands, that have told me that Suede have been incredibly influential, but they don’t sound like Suede, that’s almost like a double compliment for me.”

❏ Brett also deals with drugs, androgyny, Justine and Bernard — “I actually put an advert in the NME, that’s how I met Bernard. It read, ‘Must like Pet Shop Boys, The Smiths, David Bowie and Lloyd Cole and The Commotions. No musos, no beginners, some things are more important than ability’.”

❚ UPDATE, MAY 29: Duran Duran now offer a fulsome apology for having to cancel their current UK tour dates — not, as sceptics suspected, because of unsold tickets but because of singer Simon Le Bon’s continuing “laryngeal problems”. Their website today reports: “Following a consultation with both a vocal coach and his team of ENT specialists today, Simon Le Bon has been advised that he needs to continue to rest his voice… Devastated by the news that they will not be able to resume the tour as planned on Tuesday, Simon said ‘We’ve been postponing shows with very little notice, in the hope each day that the improvement would have been significant enough for me to sing again without risking any long-term damage’.”

View John and Nick’s special video apology at YouTube . . . Today too, Roger Taylor blogs on the DD website on the horrible irony of Woody Allen’s famous quotation “If you want make God laugh, tell him about your plans” and he makes the promise: “I know that all the shows are very close to being re-scheduled later in the year.” . . . Read Simon Le Bon’s blog at DD’s website on June 1: “I reckon I got 6 semi-tones wiped off the top of my range and … it’s very difficult not to worry about it.”

❏ Here’s a sparky interview with the band just released by the SXSW festival, recorded in March. With former MTV reporter John Norris in the chair, Nick Rhodes says he still sees Duran as an art-school band and John Taylor reflects on the golden era of MTV. Stills from this interview have been posted at Flickr

❏ This stylish tuxedoed shot by Pierpaolo Ferrari comes from the current “Long Live the 80s” issue of L’Uomo Vogue, with a feature on DD by former Wag club host Chris Sullivan, translated for the Italian edition.

HERE’S A CATCH-UP ON PREVIOUSLY POSTED DURAN NEWS FROM THE YEAR SO FAR

❏ It was 30 years in March since the 80s supergroup’s debut single Planet Earth peaked at No 12 in the UK chart… This year their 14-track CD of AYNIN spent five weeks on the UK album chart.

❏ View highlights from Duran Duran’s Unstaged online concert March 23 at the Mayan theatre, Los Angeles, in 1080p HD at the band’s Vevo channel on YouTube /DuranDuranVEVO. Click here to find which global regions are licensed to view highlights at YouTube. The four DD Unstaged concert tracks most viewed via Vevo in the first three weeks after the live webcast drew more than 1.5m views — these are All You Need is Now with 700,930 views, then Notorious 298,505, Planet Earth 290,477, and Friends of Mine 274,935 way out ahead of all other tracks, most of which pulled only four-figure audiences.

❏ Rhodes and Le Bon give a seven-minute video history of DD for ABC News, Jan 2011 — “Rio was the album that made us the biggest band in the world. It made us big in America”

❏ Duran have been blessed by an interview at Quietus, its holiness the online magazine whose touchstone is “reverence” and claims “we’re not afraid of surprising our readers”. Writer Simon Price delivers two surprises. Plus this list of post-80s albums the band think most deserve to be listened to: The Wedding Album (1993) … Pop Trash (2000) … Medazzaland (1997) … Astronaut (2004).

❏ On the currentAYNIN tour Duran Duran played North America and Mexico March 16–April 27, just before their 11-date UK tour from Newcastle to Sheffield May 18–June 4. They take in Berlin on May 26 and continue across Europe, Paris to Bergen June 10–Aug 28. [Update — These were the original plans, which were substantially cancelled in May and June.] In between they return to the UK for the V Festival on both Aug 20 and 21.

MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984

They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did

“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)

“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983

An “invaluable website” — historian Dominic Sandbrook, 2012

➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU AT TOP to go deeper into the past➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH, see the sidebar below➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s

RIP – STEVE STRANGE

◆ On Mi-soul radio on 13 Feb deejay Rusty Egan paid musical tribute to Steve Strange, his sidekick in founding the legendary Blitz Club, who died the day before: “Music says everything I could ever want to say” ... Catch up at Mixcloud

◆ During Feb 2015, Shapers of the 80s received more than 37,300 visits, its highest monthly total since launching five years ago. These came in response to our coverage of the death of Steve Strange. In the two weeks after we published tributes from Steve's friends among the former Blitz Kids, 25,000 views were counted. These have been record responses to any topic covered here

NEWS — OLD FACES, NEW MIXES FOR THE 20-TEENS

✱ Roxy Music: The Studio Albums vinyl box set out 16 March – brings together all eight of Roxy’s studio albums in a limited edition, for £149. All were mastered in 2014 for 180gm vinyl at half-speed at Abbey Road Studios. Each comes complete with original sleeve reproductions including artwork, lyrics and high-end gloss finishes

✱ Paolo Roversi shoots Rihanna for the cover of i-D’s pre-spring music issue, No 335. . . Celebrating her eighth album, R8, plus the performers, deejays and fashion designers inspired by music

✱ The latest i-D mixtape sees Sia’s Elastic Heart sit alongside the latest addition to the Ninja Tune roster, Seven Davis Jr. Mark Ronson’s uptown funk received a dubbed down rework by the one and only Benji B, kicking off the mix

✱ The Dazed February Playlist sees Rihanna team up with “some guy called Paul”, Aphex Twin drop a catalogue of new tunes and Björk share her heartbreak

✱ Who are the people set to redefine the future of style and youth culture in 2015 and beyond? Polling its global network of collaborators and influencers, the winter issue of Dazed (no longer Confused) showcases 100 cultural renegades changing the face of fashion, film, art and music. Catwalk cover star Kendall Jenner

✱ With their tour silenced by Boy George’s lack of voice Culture Club have turned to crowd-funding to bring their album Tribes to market. £12.46 pre-orders extended to the end of March through PledgeMusic, a direct-to-fan music platform, and (with luck) it’ll be released in 2015 on the band’s own label, Different Man Music. As George told the Gender Benders TV show: “I haven’t had a record deal since 1995.”

✱ Always worth dipping into The World of Princess Julia, the blog by the former 80s Blitz Kid, now nightclub deejay, critic and style icon . . . Currently “running around” between runways sussing the latest fashion pointers”

FIONA ON ‘REAL’ THEATRE…

❏ The Blitz Kids outflanked most of the 80s copyists who followed their Bowie-inspired passion for changing their look as often as possible. You’d find the follow-on generation of posers at Studio 21 on Oxford Street or the Batcave, or in a back barrel at Birmingham’s Rum Runner. After the Blitz caravanserai had moved on into the world of work, fashion designer Fiona Dealey said: “You look at these little Bat people with make-up dribbling down their necks and you feel like saying, ‘Sorry darling, not enough loose powder’. The difference was that our make-up was stage slap, Leichner not Factor. The clothes came from a costumier, Charles Fox not Flip. Dressing for the Blitz was real theatre. It wasn’t just another uniform. You felt glamorous.”

Shapers of the 80s “invaluable”

◆ Shapersofthe80s is declared an “invaluable website” by historian Dominic Sandbrook, author of the rich new cultural analysis, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–1979. We report how Sandbrook gives generous credit to key influencers on youth culture. His unstuffy combination of high and low life energised the BBC2 series The Seventies aired in 2012

◆ Elsewhere at Shapers of the 80s, telly don Simon Schama succinctly expresses why we should document the “irreverent freedom” that is a special aspect of life in Britain

Sade in a nutshell ♫ ♫

✱ After 2010’s Grammy Award winning Soldier Of Love LP, Sade went on to release The Ultimate Collection. The 29 tracks on two CDs included three new numbers, plus a version of Moon & The Sky featuring Jay-Z . . . In 2011 the band won a Grammy award for Best R&B Performance By A Group for the track Soldier Of Love

SPANDAU 30 YEARS ON

◆ Tony Hadley at Facebook: “My wife and I are pleased to announce the safe arrival of our beautiful baby daughter born on February 6, 2012” ... But for Spandau, Tony dropped another bombshell on ITV’s Loose Women on May 16

Archive — Many publication dates are arbitrary, so click and take pot luck!

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